Meet the Man Who Bought Bitcoin in 2009

Jeffrey Wernick is an independent investor whose portfolio includes early holdings in Uber and Airbnb. He also invested in Bitcoin in 2009 - the year when it came out. In an interview with Business Insider, the investor said he believes Bitcoin's value comes from its ability to solve the biggest problems with fiat money.

Wernick also serves on the advisory boards of DataWallet, a digital wallet for online data, and Qtum, a decentralized blockchain application platform. He previously founded and then sold the risk management firm AVI Portfolio Services Company. Following that, he focused on his private investment portfolio.

“Initially, my interest in [Bitcoin] was not just economic, it was also an issue of the fact of what would foster a good relationship between citizens and the government,” he said, adding that, “It's a people's currency, it's defined by the people, and it's defined by rules and a protocol that people trust. And I think in a world where people don't trust anything anymore, that it's good to have protocols that people trust that they control themselves, that are not controlled by third parties.”

“Ultimately, everybody has the same access to it at any point in time [...] nobody has privileged access to it, except maybe the miners who pay to produce it and they take a business risk associated with it and anybody could choose to get into the mining business.”

He’s one of the many who believes in the bright future for Bitcoin. For example, Tim Draper, early investor in groundbreaking projects such as the internet, Tesla, Skype and Hotmail among others, has famously said that “Bitcoin will be bigger than the internet,” among other bullish claims.
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